A contradiction in terms, since something ballistic is implied to be acted on only by gravity and will not decay.

There is something called the "ballistic coefficient" (bstar in TLE speak) that, while also a contradiction in terms, refers to the drag coefficient multipled by the area-to-mass ratio of the object in orbit.

The decay of an object in the lower reaches of low earth orbit is dictated by the product of atmospheric density with the ballistic coefficient. A dense brick will last longer than a large sail of the same mass in the same orbit.

"Ballistic decay" is the above simplification simplified further by the well-known phb method.

Somewhat religious too.

If they're lower, they're *less* intrusive to optical telescopes. Lower altitude means they're sunlit over your head while it's dark enough for astronomy for a *shorter* time.

In the extreme case, a geostationary satellite is almost always sunlit all night long from anywhere on the planet.

The Moon is sunlit almost all the time except during a rare event called a lunar eclipse.

The higher the orbit, the larger the fraction of it that's outside the earth's shadow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

No congressional auth on that one either.

Either amend the constitution and live with the real possibility of a hobbled military response time in an emergency or win the argument at the ballot box.

Not sure congress and 3/4 of the states actually feel strongly enough about Maduro or Assad or whatever else had been going on on the DL the last few decades to actually push for an amendment.

Would be a lot easier to win the argument at the ballot box if your party isn't saddled with the baggage of its cultural extremism around its neck.

As I've said before, I'm neither for nor against this stuff in Venezuela on principle. Maduro and co were clearly not the good guys. Also clearly, Rubio is the driving impetus here, and my only statement is that I expect there to be a plan here that's more thought through than Iraq was.

If it's mostly subsistence agriculture, I would think it's logically a little hard to draw the distinction between work and not work in the sense of punching the clock and kicking back after 5.

I'm willing to be corrected here, but I'd assume back in 1830 is farmer bob and fam worked the soil so they could eat 70 hours a week and sold maybe a 10% surplus at market, they had a 7 hour work week.

Mhh...best not try turn over that rock.

Sitting on a pile of probably operational nuclear warheads has its advantages.

And calling the guy's bluff while implicitly signaling your own is unwise.

If AI makes people more productive, it would stand to reason that it would create more wealth with the same amount of effort.

In such an environment, what exactly would be the incentive to work less given that you can get more from working the same?

Mechanization didn't shorten the work week. Automation didn't shorten the work week.

Why would AI be different?

No. Back in the Soviet days, we were all equally poor, except for the few animals who were more equal than the others.

Regular power and water cuts. Party line telephones (in a major city in 1989). Persistent shortages of one kind of foodstuff or another (retirees lining up at the state run dairy store at 5am to get their share before it ran out). Nearly decade-long waiting lists for automobiles and furniture.

We came here when I was 7 in the early 90s. Our first place here was an apartment across the street from a supermarket in Philadelphia. We went a day or two after we settled in and I'd never seen my mothers jaw drop so low when she saw all the food just there for purchase.

But equality!

They're not. Takes less time to see a shape than to decode digits. That's why they're still around as wall clocks almost a century after various kinds of digital readouts became practical.

you insensitive clod!

The typical demographic for MTV when it began is near retirement age now.

"Disclaimer: Google, its subsidiaries, and corporate affiliates do not provide medical advice."

Right up there with "Caution: contents hot" on coffee cups.

This is America. No one will stop you from wasting your hard earned currency on quack pills, lottery tickets, and the like.

Someone out there on the internet is wrong ??!

I must rectify this at once! I'm sure my usual tersely worded stern missive will do the trick!

Explain to me please why under Biden ten million people showed up unannounced and why under Trump they effectively stopped.

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/s...

Dis. Fucking. Ingenuous.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki...

Biden's day 1 order revoked Trump 1 enhanced enforcement order.

You are correct. This order does not have the words "open borders" in it. It does not de jure open the borders. The executive branch does not have that authority. This order merely reverts to the old honor system of releasing illegal border crossers into the country with a court date years in the future.

But again: playing word games and asserting that de facto open borders is not open borders is not de jure open borders is disingenuous and if you believe your own side's sophistry, that's up to you. I do not. I see de facto open borders, I see 10 million people entering the country in response to that, and I conclude that the Democratic Party is not interested in enforcing the border.

I infer from additional context, including persistent bellyaching among lower level Democrats to defund ICE and pinky swear enforce the laws through other methods; persistent assertions that border enforcement is racist because of the average melanin content and superficial appearance of people on either side of the border; and a persistent undercurrent of left-wing internationalism that rejects as immoral any national borders, that the Democrats are uninterested in enforcing the border because they believe in their bones that to do so is immoral.

And while they are free to hold that belief, it is a deal breaker for me. And it is a large part of the reason I voted for Trump and will continue to vote for the most viable opponent to the Democrat on the ballot. Unless and until the Democrats shed this nonsense from their platform and from their beliefs. The former is pretty easy to do. The latter requires generational turnover.